In Trial of 'Morgue Boys,' Former Police Officer Tells of His Tour as Predator in Blue

By JOSEPH P. FRIED

Published: March 19, 1995

To hear the former corrupt police officer tell it, protecting the public was the last thing on the minds of the ring of rogue officers in the crime-ridden Brooklyn precinct.

Far more important, at least as indicated by his courtroom tale, was robbing drug dealers while on duty and making illegal arrests to gain overtime pay.

The former officer, Daniel Eurell, began testimony for the prosecution last week as the lead witness in the latest trial stemming from charges of major corruption at several New York City police precincts -- in this case the 73d in Brownsville.

Law enforcement officials say that a group of up to 15 officers known as the Morgue Boys carried out a three-year reign of banditry and fraud in the precinct. They conducted raids -- "hits," Mr. Eurell called them -- on suspected drug-dealing sites, stealing money and drugs and making the unwarranted arrests, the officials said.

The group was called the Morgue Boys because its members met to plan their raids near a factory that once made coffins, Mr. Eurell said.

He resumes testifying tomorrow in Federal District Court in Brooklyn at the trial of three officers who served with him in the 73d. They are charged with conspiring to violate extortion and civil-rights laws.

The three -- Richard Sanfilippo, 28; Keith Goodman, 29, and Frank Mistretta, 53 -- are accused of participating in the raids and sharing stolen money at various times in 1991 and 1992. Mr. Goodman is also accused of committing perjury at the trial of a person he arrested. The defendants, who are all on restricted duty, deny the charges. Their lawyers argue that they are the targets of prosecutors working with Mr. Eurell and two other former officers, who also say they belonged to the ring. The lawyers say the former officers have falsely implicated the men on trial to gain leniency.

In his testimony, Mr. Eurell, 29, has painted a vivid picture of a band of predators in uniform -- himself included. He testified that he took part in 200 to 300 illegal raids of apartments and bodegas while serving in the 73d from December 1988 until his arrest in May 1992.

"Sometimes we got in by verbally threatening people," he said. "Other times we would break in using any tools we had -- battering rams, crowbars."

"There would be nights when you could do two to three raids," Mr. Eurell told the jury in Judge I. Leo Glasser's courtroom. By contrast, he said, he made only 5 to 10 legitimate arrests in his entire time at the 73d.

To assure overtime from processing the illegal arrests, "you would try to make an arrest at the end of your tours," he said.

The officers hid the raids from their superiors by avoiding radio communications that would give them away, he said. Where arrests were made, they filed false reports -- "cover stories" -- justifying the arrests, he said.

A spokesman for the Brooklyn District Attorney's office, Patrick Clark, said that a review of numerous cases handled by officers implicated in the ring had led to the dismissal of charges against 20 people. He said he did not know how many of the 20 had been convicted before the dismissals.

Officials say the ring at the 73d Precinct was exposed when Mr. Eurell was arrested in a separate drug conspiracy case in Suffolk County and he entered a plea deal requiring him to reveal all his other crimes.

In its report last year, the Mollen Commission, the panel that investigated police corruption in New York City, cited the 73d Precinct as one of several "pockets of corruption" that had existed for so long partly "because of willfully blind supervisors who fear the consequences of a corruption scandal more than corruption itself."